Understanding the Improving
Crisis Prevention and Response Policies: Dynamics of Institutional
Exclusion and

Conflict Escalation in Russia and Ukraine

Prof. Anton Oleinik, Memorial University, Canada

This
project will explore how institutional exclusion of disadvantaged and socially
vulnerable groups leads to radicalization of violence and social conflict and
investigate what role institutions can play in the prevention of radicalization
and violent escalation of conflict.

This
project will explore how institutional exclusion of disadvantaged and socially
vulnerable groups leads to radicalization of violence and social conflict and
investigate what role institutions can play in the prevention of radicalization
and violent escalation of conflict.

Institutional exclusion
is important dimension of social exclusion. It refers to the limited access of
people to the political and legal system and other state institutions and/or
their unwillingness to rely on them when solving everyday problems. As a
result, public and private spheres become increasingly disconnected.

Institutional
exclusion may be observed in many societies. Well-acclaimed writings and policy
initiatives by Hernando de Soto (1989, 2001) and
his fellows from the Institute for Liberty and
Democracy (Peru, Lima) can be interpreted
as focused on various forms of the institutional exclusion. However,

(i)solutions they offer refer only to
comparative costs legal and extra-legal activities (the ‘costs of the law’ and
the ‘costs of the informality’) and omit some important aspects of the problem,
namely the incentive structure of public servants that may prevent from lowering
the costs of the law;

(ii)they study mainly the experience
of the developing countries in Latin America,
whereas the post-Soviet countries have their own particularities in this
regard. For instance, ordinary people in these countries consciously minimize
their contacts with the state and its representatives (de Soto assumes that
people are always interested in getting their activities legalized and
regularized), which lead Richard Rose and his fellows, e.g. Anton Oleinik
(1997, 2010) to compare the institutional structure in these countries with a
‘hour-glass’ composed of two spheres – on the one hand, the state and its
activities and, on the other hand, the everyday life of ordinary people –
connected by a very narrow mid-point.

In
Ukraine institutional exclusion brings to formation of ‘hour-glass society’,
characterized with sharp division of all spheres of social, economic and
political life on formal and informal ones, thus making the life of ordinary
citizens unofficial and disconnected with the formal rules and functioning of
state organizations.

The
so-called "Orange revolution” can be interpreted as an attempt to change the
then existing state of affairs: diverse social groups that normally have
conflicting interests – students, pensioners, business people – all
participated in mass protests. However, seven years on, little has changed in
this regards, and institutional exclusion is continuously reproduced in Ukraine. This
calls for an in-depth analysis of the problem.